Meet Dave Cote, Candidate for State Representative in District 36

Dave Cote, chairman of the South Kingstown's GOP Town Committee, is running as a Republican for State Representative in District 36 (Charlestown/New Shoreham/South Kingstown/Westerly). Mr. Cote will be involved in a 3-way race this fall, between incumbent Democrat Donna Walsh and independent Matt McHugh, who held the seat as a Democrat, before being defeated by Walsh in 2006.

When recently asked by Anchor Rising about his reasons for running for office. Mr. Cote had lots of specific examples has was eager to discuss…

Rhode Island's tax base is putting people out of work and crushing the taxpayer. What we did recently in the town of South Kingstown, for instance, was to push for a referendum to change the health care contract, to change from fully-insured to self-insured. It's literally a name change. The town council and town manager refused to do it, but they recently agreed to one of our recommendations on health care changes. The town made the change and it's going to save the taxpayer up to one million dollars – they confirmed it.

So here's something that was obvious to save the taxpayer money, no changes to the employee, no changes to Blue Cross – and it was going to save one million dollars.

There are all these savings and restructurings we can do to help the taxpayer. Of course, then the town will probably say, "we need that for the rainy-day fund". Well, we've confirmed that the town of South Kingstown has over 25 million dollars in their rainy-day fund.

Guess what folks, it's raining here on us today.

Oil prices are going up. Gas prices are going up. Electricity is going up. We're in trouble. Property taxes are killing us. I'm running for the taxpayer. I'm running to improve the employment situation. I'm running for our children and our grandchildren, so they can be employed in the state of Rhode Island. Of course, everyone says they want people to be employed, but now we have to do something about it, and what that means is restructuring. In my company, we had to restructure, and we couldn't have the same health care plan as before. In order to keep me, Dave Cote, working, they restructured health care. As a result, lots of employees got to keep their jobs.

It is the same within the government. We need to restructure the pensions and change to 401(k)s, just like the private employers had to do, to keep us employed. The government needs to restructure pensions and health care to maintain an economy that encourages employment.

Coming in Part 2: No more playing Monopoly...